Sleepy Hollow - S2E17 - Awakening

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Previously on Sleepy Hollow, ‘What Lies Beneath’

At Hartley’s Old Books, Ichabod peruses some HG Wells lamenting that the Man Out of Time is a trope. “Don’t worry,” Abbie assures him, “you’re the only one in the non-fiction section.” The cat lady book store owner is doing her best digging up the books they’ve requested, like Enoch’s Bible, but there’s just not much to go on when you’re hunting down single-copy demon books.

 

Heading out, Ichabbie discuss redefining their roles as Witnesses, again, and putting their bond above all else, again, even spoilers like Rosebud. Which would just be impossible for me, so thank goodness I’m not a Witness. BTW, did I tell you how the season finale ends? Kidding!

As people in the city center bicker through their day, a copy of the Liberty Bell hanging in a median tolls. The world around them shakes and their eyes turn white. One strangles her husband, one electrocutes a road-rage driver, another channels the dead at a funeral (Aarniokoski’s funeral home, shoutout to the writer/producer) and calls out his cheating wife. The effect fades much to Henry’s aggravation. He snaps the Grimoire shut muttering “in sanguinum” (in blood) and walks away.

 

Back at the precinct Jenny runs in and drops the news about Evil Frank. How to control him? Say, we spent all that FX money on a very nifty Gorgon head…. Abbie says ever since they found the Mills ancestress in the Gorgon’s lair, they’ve been trying to figure out how to bring her back to life, so maybe freezing and unfreezing him is a possibility.

 

Out on the street, Ichabod and Abbie review the magical symptoms and realize they’ve got a Witch Problem starting with that bell. You know the actual Liberty Bell? Ichabod cracked it. “A little.” Flashing back to ye olden days, we see him plant a homemade black powder bomb on the captured bell in the British camp and blow it. Spychabod! The bells, moulded by the Axminister Bell Company, were marked with a pagan symbol for awakening. The Witnesses determine that any witch descendants in the area, which could now number in the thousands, could be awakened into their witchhood at the next tolling, so now Ichie has to blow that up, too. Abbie suggests calling in Katrina, but Ichabod ixnays that since she’s been weird after the Solomon Kane encounter.

Good call, because she’s back in black at in the cabin practicing blood magic to summon Henry, and it works. “Your dark side becomes you, mother.” Indeed, I’m rather miffed that it took 17 episodes. Reconvening amongst the hothouse orchids at Frederick’s Manor, Henry presents Katrina with the Grimoire. His new goal: to bring back witchbreed through the Awakening Ritual with the two of them as coven leaders, but Katrina must lead the ritual since he’s a Mudblood. Can she trust him now? He just tried to burn the world down. “I’m all better now,” he basically says. She wonders at giving up her 200-year-long struggle to save Ichabod, but the idea of a Lovin’ Coven with her Bun in the Oven is too much for Katrina to resist. Feel the hate within you, Katrina! Come to the Dark Side!

 

Reveling over the drills and garden gnomes (“barbate pygmies”) at the local garden store, Ichabod and Abbie gather the necessary bomb supplies but has to be reminded to pipe down. He asks for flint and steel as Abbie smugly rolls by, “A lighter.” Modern, he responds, isn’t always better when it comes to blowing shit up. They gather Jenny and make ready outside of the catacombs, but Jenny spots a laser sight and they all dive for cover. It’s Evil Cap’n! Jenny takes off after him and they have a BAMF shoot out in a parking garage. Irving demands the location of his family, but GoodFrank said to protect them from EvilFrank, so she reluctantly guns him down point blank. He rises, eyes black, as she escapes into the catacombs.

 

The Witnesses again prepare to take on the Witch Bell, but now Henry and Katrina stroll by in the luscious flowing black of Team Evil. Ichabod tries to get her away from Henry, but Katrina’s no longer about that life. She claims it’s only right since Washington reneged on his deal with the covens to allow them reintegration once the war was won. I agree, that was shady. They’re only awakening their blood to regain their spot in society, see? With Zombie Witches, see? Who are by now probably 1/32^nd Witchkind, but let’s not talk sensibly. “Be wary,” Ichabod counsels Katrina, who is clearly about to rip off the Band-Aid, and she does. Ichatrina? Over. Then she balls up her light powers, blows them back into the catacombs, and seals the hole.

Now stuck in the catacombs, the Witnesses have only a few hours to stop Katrina and Henry before the Perigean peak. Abbie plays the good BFF and says maybe Katrina was influenced. Ichabod’s like, thanks for sparing my feelings but, have you seen all the black she’s been wearing this week? Instead of “Juicy,” her pants say “Evil.” I think we’re through.

Team Evil moves the Witch Bell to the coven’s old meeting house, and Katrina’s resplendent in her all-purpose Coven Leader/200 Years A Purgatory dress. You know it has just a whiff of brimstone left, too. Yum. Henry wonders if she’s having second thoughts, but Katrina’s actually had an epiphany: her struggle was never about dark or light, but about saving her soul through reuniting with Henry. False: Katrina’s struggle was that the fans wanted her evil all along and the producers said no ‘til 4 million people got sick of their nonsense.

Their bonding moment is interrupted by Ichabod firing a round into the night sky, summoning Henry by his full chosen name, like he loves to do before a duel. Looking mighty dapper, Henry strolls outside wondering where Witness #2 is. Abbie? Drawing on your ass from the SUV. He laughs at the idea that his own father would shoot him, but Ichabod is officially over it and fires… into Henry’s force field, but still, pretty momentous. Ichabod is so very done with nobly accepting the guilt of a son he never knew about. Behind them, the SUV speeds forward, but Katrina steps out and blows it up. “LEFTENANT!!” Ichabod screams.

Ichabod asks Katrina how she can excuse herself from cold-blooded murder after he pulled her from purgatory. “It is already done,” she says blithely. Turns out, it isn’t: Abbie rolled out and set the charge. Henry realizes this and scoops the Witnesses up, tying them to a pillar inside, but misses the bomb, so Ichabod and Abbie form a plan with his two pistols of Greek Fire bullets and her flint. Katrina and Henry begin their spell, and the bell tolls, waking the witches including the bookstore owner. Ichabod frees their hands and fires. Henry stops one bullet but when the bell blows, the bullet finds its mark and Henry falls, mortal after all. With his dying breaths, he observes his family, asking Katrina to call him Jeremy and sharing a verse of Hamlet with Ichabod: He was a man/Take him for all in all/I shall not look upon his like again. “Father?” Jeremy whispers, flaking into ash. Is it wrong that I’m sad?

 

Jenny skillfully lures Evil Frank through the tunnels into the Masonic cell, holding the Gorgon head just below his sightline while he taunts her through the protective glass. His wife and daughter should be awakening into their Witchkind selves any moment! Say what?! Jenny starts to lift the Gorgon head, but as Henry dies, Frank falls, black smoke spilling from his mouth. “How did I get down here?” he asks. Jenny looks down at the writhing head in her hand, debating, then decides. The Piano Music of Satisfying Resolutions plays as she scoops Good Frank up for a hug. Awww yay! BAMF love.

 

Katrina, on the other hand, not happy music. She wheels on Ichabod. “YOU are the source of my sorrow, Ichabod Crane,” she curses, strangling him. “I should have let you die! This time, I WILL.” She grabs the Grimoire and chants up a vortex. Abbie runs after her… and they’re gone. This scene is both great and galling because Katia Winter is brilliant as an evil witch and they should’ve done this 10 episodes ago.

Abbie awakes in Dem Woods and calls for Katrina, checking her dead cell. She stumbles out at the same spot Ichabod did in the pilot and finds a carriage track where the road should be, then almost gets run down. Sympathy for Ye Olde Devile strikes up gleefully on a fiddle, and the city sign reads, “Sleepy Hollow, Population 1400.” RUH ROH!

Katrina awakes back in her past, still-pregnant self—a nurse in the medical tent where Revolutionary soldiers lay dying of horrible wounds. “Jeremy, I will never leave you again,” she tells her belly. All the fucks she once gave about Ichabod? Literally going back in time and un-giving every. last. one. Harsh!

Abbie, now at the town bulletin board, suddenly notices she’s catching all the Colonial Side Eye for being the wrong color in a frilly white world and tries to walk away but soldiers demand her papers. “Must’ve left them in my sock drawer,” she quips, but realizes there’s no getting out of this one. They decide she might be “touched” (crazy) and toss her in jail. Abbie tries one final gambit: she has information that could change the course of the war, but there’s only one person she’ll talk to—Captain Ichabod Crane.

 

Overall this episode had some epic turns, but as you probably know, Sleepy Hollow is on the precipice of renewal or cancellation. The can of worms this time-travel redux potentially opens is exponential, and many potential storylines they set up this season are now upended: Katrina will never separate Abraham from Headless, we’ll probably never see non-Headless Abraham again, and who knows how this will change Ichabod stuck in the future. Could Moloch reappear without Jeremy to halt the entire MolApocalypse? Even using the Liberty Bell smacks of desperation—that’s a big item to burn so early in the series, not unlike last week’s bust at the Finestrella. I’m worried, Sleepy Heads. Are you? Don’t forget to join the discussion by leaving comments for the podcast.